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One Team One Dream

Montana State University’s Queer Straight Alliance is a registered student organization
led by MSU students to support and empower queer students and community members in
Bozeman. Our group is made up of members of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Trans Queer Intersex
Asexual (LGBTQIA) community and allied students and community members.

Today we write to endorse and give our genuine thanks to the Bullock administration
for renewing its commitment to LGBTQIA Montanans by releasing Executive Order No.
04-2016. Many of our members will live in Montana for years to come and we appreciate
the state’s legal commitment to ensuring we are safe from discrimination when working
as state employees.

In 2013, the Montana University System augmented the system’s non-discrimination policy
to include gender identity and sexual orientation. Until today, the MUS’s nondiscrimination
policy was the highest policy in the state to include gender identity and sexual orientation
as protected classes. Further, that landmark policy was championed by students across
the MUS and catalyzed by students at MSU.

However, policy change is not enough. Though nondiscrimination policies enumerate our collective value of diversity
and present important legal recourse when discrimination occurs, they do little to
enforce inclusion or ensure that it does not happen in the first place. On the MSU
campus, the LGBTQIA community has experienced little more than avowal of advocacy
from our administration. Notably, our administration currently provides zero direct
support or services to LGBTQIA students.

As recently as Spring 2015, the MSU Diversity Awareness Office conducted a randomized
survey and found that a majority (53%) of LGBQ students felt they had to conceal an
aspect of their identity to avoid harassment or discrimination on campus. The responding gender nonconforming students reported fearing for their physical
safety twice as much as cisgender males on campus. Most concerning is that many (32.5%)
students reported that these incidents were taking place in their classrooms. To protect
themselves, LGBTQIA students “adopt a policy of trying to blend in” and have resigned
themselves to the fact that verbal harassment and homophobic slurs are simply part
of the culture on campus.

As MSU students, staff, faculty and LGBTQIA Montanans, we respectfully request that
the MSU Administration take responsibility and serve as a leader for the MUS and the
State of Montana by dedicating institutional resources to building safer and more
inclusive spaces. To move towards that, we have the following demands;

The creation and funding of an LGBTQIA specific staff position in the MSU Diversity
Awareness Office to grow and expand the existing LGBTQIA support programming.

A clear plan of action to establish a gender neutral bathroom in each campus building,
a gender neutral locker room in our gym facilities, and gender neutral housing space
before 2020 as well as the addition of gender neutral bathrooms in all new and remodeled
buildings.

Widely distributed best practices and inclusive language for all on campus staff including
resident advisors and faculty members.

Development of processes that allow students to officially use their preferred name
and preferred gender on all on-campus forms including those required by the Registrar’s
Office and the Cat Card office.

Establish for the Fall 2016 academic year an infrastructure to pair LGBTQIA residents
in our student housing with LGBTQIA accepting students.

We appreciate your response in directing us to the person accountable for diversity
efforts in your administration and working together to make our campus a safe and
inclusive space for all students to learn.